Robin Williams Quotes

When inspiration does not come, I go for a walk, go to the movie, talk to a friend, let go... The muse is bound to return again, especially if I turn my back!

I hibernate. I hibernate until the next project takes shape in my mind.

Some of the best writing I've done, whether I'm shooting a story or thinking of a script, I write it in my head as I'm running. Running literally jogs my brain.

If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play.

What to do when inspiration doesn't come; be careful not to spook, get the wind up, force things into position. You must wait around until the idea comes.

Ideas come from somewhere. People don't come up with these ideas from nowhere. Something triggers your thoughts.

I suddenly realised, hey, I'm not a lazy idiot, I'm an idler! It's something to aspire to, it's part of the creative process! That's fantastic!

The thing about inspiration is that it takes your mind off everything else.

Ideas are the root of creation.

I would worry if I wasn't coming up with ideas, if I wasn't inspired.

A manuscript under way always gave me something to do; only while enduring the aimlessness between books was I truly glum.

I feel like I'm the most creative when I'm bored.

I once set myself a deadline: half a chapter a week, 20 minutes a day. The thought froze me instantly, like literary Botox. I returned to my non-schedule: sleeping, writing 20 minutes, and then back to sleep. Breakfast in bed, with juice congealing on the sill: pages and pages began to pour out again.

I do some of my best work when I'm dead.

I wouldn't have been in the mind-set to do another 'Fly.'

Oftentimes, when I'm trying to get inspired, I'll find myself just staring at the wall and let the fans inspire me to get creative.

When you are in the field of creativity, you lose track of time. Only the flow exists.

I think I write or publish as much as I do because I can bear being without a book to work on. But routinely when I finish a book, I think, "What will I do? Where will I get an idea?" And a kind of low-level panic sets in. And then eventually something happens. I don't know. If I knew how it happened I would repeat the process, but I don't know - something just occurs to me.

I don't think music is done by any means. I would love to do it again but it's finding the right thing.

I spend many months in apparently listless rumination out of which I hope something will emerge.

Do you know how many movies I wrote when I was high?

I like to laze around. I think that's a huge part of creativity. You have to let your mind relax and then another part of your brain suddenly connects with the solution you're trying to find.

I have a basic indolence about me which is essential to writing. ... It's thinking time, it's hanging-out time, it's daydreaming time. You know, it's lie-around-the-bed time, it's sitting-like-a-dope-in-your-chair time. And that seems to me essential to any work.

The creative act always requires a stepping back. It's called the incubation period. The incubation period - one of the four phases of creativity - is when you're not consciously thinking of a problem, and you're letting it marinate. So this is why you hear time and again, people saying they had that "Eureka" moment in the bath, like Archimedes, or in the shower, or while going for a walk or in a coffeehouse.

The intellect is not the means of creation, and creation does not take place through the functioning of the intellect; on the contrary, there is creation when the intellect is silent.